On Your World Wednesday (10/11/11), Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) teamed up with host Eric Bolling in what was obviously a deliberate effort to smear the Occupy Wall Street protesters and try to distinguish themselves from those model protesters, the Tea Party movement. Unfortunately, in Lee’s quest to demonize OWS and sanctify the Tea Party, Lee could not stick to the truth. He wrongly said that “not one” Tea Party protester had been arrested to his knowledge, ever. UPDATED WITH CORRECTION AND COMMENTS FROM ELLEN

Bolling asked, "The gatherings that you attended, how many people were arrested?"

“Not one to my knowledge, ever." Sen. Lee said.

“Nor mine,” Bolling agreed. "Now meanwhile, there have been several hundred arrested in New York, there was 100 arrested yesterday, I believe in Boston." Eric replied.

Lee nodded in agreement.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Unfortunately, the original version of this post apparently cited an instance of an arrest that turned out to be misleading. A certain blogger (who is so obsessed with us and Fox that he pores over our every utterances with the idea that catching us in a mistake and calling us "liars" somehow proves Fox is truly fair and balanced) has apparently noted this, probably with hyperventilating accusations about our ethics. But the fact is, the Huffington Post article we originally linked to suggests it was Tea Partiers who were arrested.

But OK, we were wrong. No Tea Partiers were arrested in THAT instance. But there have been others: A Tea Party protester was arrested for spitting on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver as he enetered the Capitol to vote on health care reform. Cleaver did not press charges. However, in a statement, Cleaver's spokesman said, "The Congressman would like to thank the US Capitol Police officer who quickly escorted the other Members and him into the Capitol, and defused the tense situation with professionalism and care." In other words, if not for police intervention, it might well have been worse.

But there have been plenty of actual arrests, too. For example, as Gawker reported, the head of the Chicago Tea Party was arrested for soliciting a prostitute (not that that stopped him from mocking Jesse Jackson Jr.'s extramarital affair). A leader of the South Carolina Tea Party has been arrested for pirating software. An Oklahoma Tea Partier was arrested for twittering death threats. The Indiana Herald reported, "The founder of the American Tea Party of Madison County and her son have been arrested for the second time in less than a month, this time in connection with stolen guns." A Nevada Tea Party candidate for the U.S. Senate avoided arrest for writing bad checks when he agreed to make restitution.

So, yeah, we made a mistake but our original point still stands:

If Lee didn’t know, Bolling should have and should have corrected the record, rather than deliberately trying to make the OWS people out as criminals, and the Tea Partiers as solid citizens.